Pulse of the state

Majority supports tax swap and increased school funding

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As you probably know, Gov. Rod Blagojevich has flatly
ruled out an income- or sales-tax hike in exchange for a property-tax cut
and more money for education. House Speaker Michael Madigan has said that
there isn’t sufficient support in his Democratic caucus to pass an
income- or sales-tax hike. But a recent poll shows that the public disagrees
with both politicians. The finding of majority support for a tax swap plan
also seems to be right in line with those of previous surveys. In addition,
the poll found strong opposition to the governor’s supercontroversial
gross-receipts-tax (GRT) plan. The survey, conducted independently by the Glengariff
Group, found that about 57 percent of Illinois voters support a so-called
tax swap and just under 28 percent oppose it. The question was put to respondents in a neutral
manner, and is one of the best polling questions on this subject that
I’ve seen: “Another idea being discussed would raise the
state’s income tax from 3 percent to 5 percent, increase the sales
tax on some services, and increase the state’s corporate income tax.
In exchange for these tax increases, property taxes would be reduced by 20
percent to 25 percent for every homeowner on the school portion of their
property taxes. The new money raised would be used to increase funding for
schools. Do you support or oppose this legislation?”The survey reports that 36.7 percent “strongly
support” the tax hike, with 20.5 percent supporting it
“somewhat.” On the other side, 14 percent are
“somewhat” opposed, and 11 percent are “strongly”
opposed. The survey results prompted a spokesperson for the
Illinois Federation of Teachers (which supports a tax hike for education)
to say that the union would support the idea of the General
Assembly’s fighting it out with the governor this summer if it was
necessary to secure more money for schools. But, believing that people are
far more amenable to the idea until crunch time actually comes, politicians
don’t usually trust polls on taxation. A poll taken in March for Citizen Action offered a
much more leading question and found that 66 percent favored and 25 percent
opposed an income-tax swap. Northern Illinois University’s
comprehensive “Illinois Policy Survey,” which was conducted
November-January, found that 57 percent supported an income-tax swap. A
poll taken for Copley News Service last September had 50 percent supporting
the tax swap and 38 percent opposing it. All three polls, however,
concentrated only on the income tax; there was no mention of the current
proposal to expand sales taxes to services. The Glengariff live telephone poll of 600 registered
voters was taken May 15-18 and has a margin of error of 4 percent. The poll
found that even a majority of Republican voters supported the tax-swap
proposal (52.6 percent, with 31.9 percent saying they
“strongly” support it and just 20 percent saying they
“strongly” oppose it). A whopping 65 percent of
African-American voters say that they back the plan; 53.6 percent of whites
say that they support it. Women backed it 61.3-24.0; men supported it
53.0-31.6. Suburban collar-county voters backed the proposal
56.8-31.0. Majorities of downstate voters supported the swap idea, except
in southern Illinois, where the backing was more tepid: Just over
two-thirds (67.3 percent) of western- and northwestern-Illinois voters,
51.8 percent of central Illinoisans, and 44.3 percent of southern
Illinoisans endorsed it. However, the margins of error are quite high on
those numbers because they are such small subsets — so they may be
right, but beware. The poll also found that Illinoisans are evenly
split, 43-43, on the governor’s GRT idea, but many people are
strongly opposed. According to the poll, 29 percent of all registered
voters strongly oppose the governor’s tax plan. That’s a higher
number than any individual demographic that strongly opposes the tax-swap
idea. Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political
newsletter, and thecapitolfaxblog.com.